UV disinfection isnt working

Well: dug well, poor construction (close to house, cap has obvious holes in it, and downhill of a sloped driveway that quickly gets covered in muddy runoff during rains), approx 4' wide, perhaps 40' deep (dont see how to take off cap, but it has a rope that you can pull out to test depth?).

House: 2 bathrooms, just a couple people. Not a lot of insane pressure, so gpm cant be that great.

Bought house 2 mos ago. The house had a water softener, pressure tank, zero filtration. It was left with a filtration system that wasnt hooked up. Water tested positive for coliform and e coli. Started buying drinnking water.

Shocked well 1 mos ago: poured 3 gallons bleach down well. By my rough estimates, this was overkill, but it was hard to smell chlorine. Ran it to the taps, thru hot water heater. Soaked for a day, at least. Attempted to flush the well, let the house continue to be chlorinated. Waited a few days, then retest. Positive coliform, no e-coli. At this time, hooked in the whole-water system after the softener/pressure tank "Pura UV20-3" with brand new cartridges and UV lamp. http://www.purauv.com/purauv20.htm

1 week ago: Removed the carbon/10 micron filter cartridge, filled that blue canister with approx 1 gallon of bleach and ran all taps. This to disinfect the pipes and everything downstream of the UV system. Pool-testing chlorine strips went off the scale at each tap, so had to be way beyond 10 ppm, hopefully beyond 100ppm? Let house lines soak chlorinated for 1 day. Replaced filter cartridge, flushed taps until test strips said no chlorine. Waited another 2 days, retest, back to positive (high!) e-coli and coliform for all that work. This was just after some heavy rains. As they say, "WTF".

Yes, its a bad well, no way can afford a new one. But should the UV be able to work? The Pura guys say it should. Please advise to help decide next step:
1) could the UV lamp be insufficient? Yes, its on, you can see the glow. Water always seemed clear, even before filters were hooked up.
2) if UV lamp should be able to handle the contamination, what is culprit? could the lines require another shocking?
3) if UV lamp could be overloaded, whats better: chlorination injection/treatment, or another UV treatment? Recommendations?
4) testing at the lab for ecoli/coliform is getting expensive and annoying- recommend home-test kits?

There could be cross contamination between the backwash line for the softener and the soil line to the septic. I see a lot of guys who just shove the backwash line into the soil line with no air gap and the water system then becomes contaminated with ecoli.

Do you thoroughly chlorinate the entire house? Did you run every single faucet, shower, flush all the toilets, run the dishwasher, washing machine, outdoor spigots, ice maker in the fridge and the humidifier on the furnace? Is the a stubbed piece of pipe someplace that water doesn't run through? If you miss one water delivery when chlorinating, the bacteria colony will reproduce and contaminate the entire system all over.

There could be cross contamination between the backwash line for the softener and the soil line to the septic. I see a lot of guys who just shove the backwash line into the soil line with no air gap and the water system then becomes contaminated with ecoli.

Do you thoroughly chlorinate the entire house?....

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Craigpump, thanks.
The watersoftener is before the filter unit. I don't know about softeners plumbing enough to understand "soil line" but does this matter if its before the filter? The softener just drains out onto the lawn, it could get contaminated, but no more than the well.
You might have a point about the taps- I did not run dish washer. So bacteria is so tenacious, and chlorine doesnt diffuse through dead-ends, that one un-chlorinated tap could allow high re-population? Tricky enemy.

From your description it sounds like the well is in a bad landscape position. I would try to divert runoff water so it does not wash over the well head. You need to repair the well head so surface water is not getting in the well. A slab or a well house might help. Sealing up holes etc could help.

When I take a sample I like to use a hose bibb because kitchen sink faucets with a swivel etc can harbor bacteria. It is hard for the bleach to get in all the cracks etc unless you disassemble the faucet and soak it in bleach water. If you do use an inside spigot, be sure to take off aerators and I always flame the faucet thoroughly. Just make sure it is not a plastic faucet. I wash my hands good and use rubbing alcohol on my hands to make sure I do not contaminate anything.

I like to super chlorinate the well with granular chlorine like used in swimming pools. I buy it at a local pool supply. You can get it in one pound bags or five pound bottles. It is much stronger then Clorox. HTH granules are about 53% chlorine but the Aqua Chem I use is 71.8 % Trichloro-s triazinetrione others on this forum use liquid bleach and do not recommend granular. I use both methods but with stubborn wells I try granular. The granular chlorine will stay in the well longer. I like to get the chlorine up to at least 100 parts per million and be sure to get the super chlorinated water in all of the pipes and be sure to wash down the inside of the well casing.

When I take a sample I like to use a hose bibb because kitchen sink faucets with a swivel etc can harbor bacteria. It is hard for the bleach to get in all the cracks etc unless you disassemble the faucet and soak it in bleach water. If you do use an inside spigot, be sure to take off aerators and I always flame the faucet thoroughly. Just make sure it is not a plastic faucet. I wash my hands good and use rubbing alcohol on my hands to make sure I do not contaminate anything.

So no one thinks the UV lamp could be overloaded? General consensus that one missed tap chlorination or bad sampling procedure sent subsequent lab test through the roof?
I'll do another chlorination/test.

Before the UV light was installed you should have taken a chemical sample to make sure the water met the parameters for a UV light. There are issues that could cause the light not to be effective. These types of issues would need to be corrected before the water goes to the UV light, if there were any such issues. The UV lights link you provided have an 8-10 gpm rating which is for a small wholehouse unit. If several water using fixtures are being used at once, the gpm may be higher and you may not get proper treatment. You may need a flow restrictor in the line or a UV light and housing that can treat a higher volume of water. The Pura Big Boy treats 15 gpm and would be a better choice for a whole house UV system. More is better in this case. If everything is sized correctly, the water to be treated with the UV light falls in acceptable parameters , all of the water passes through the UV housing and if the light is new and working, then I would assume there is contamination downstream from the UV light. All of these things are important. Only you know how much water you are using.

The UV lights link you provided have an 8-10 gpm rating which is for a small wholehouse unit. If several water using fixtures are being used at once, the gpm may be higher and you may not get proper treatment. You may need a flow restrictor in the line or a UV light and housing that can treat a higher volume of water.

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That is something to think about for a UV filter.

The water can pass by the light to quickly if the flow is to high.

Also make sure you have a real UV lamp made for your filter.

There are a lot of cheaper Knock Offs coming from China and other places that may only be Blacklights and they are not the same as a UV lamp used in water purifying.

The water can pass by the light to quickly if the flow is to high. Also make sure you have a real UV lamp made for your filter.

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Thanks for comments everyone- so high water rate could easily cause UV to be overloaded, along with water turbidity and iron/hardness? TDS showing 276 or so (with heavy shock chlorination again-this affects?), is that too high for UV? Its a fresh lamp & sleeve (no calcium build up yet). Do I need to go RO?

There is a simple needle-valve inline with the filter system (garden hose kind of valve). Can this work as a flow limiter? If not, where/which flow limiter would I get? But to measure max flow rate, wouldn't I have to turn on every tap that could be used simultaneously (flush, dishwasher, laundry, faucet) and measure an instantaneous rate? Would need a flowmeter for that, which seems to cost between $100 and $300. Might as well just put another UV filter in line right?

I notice that the Pura "Big Boy Series" UV lamp is the same power, 22 W, as the "UV-20" 8-10gpm system. Perhaps the add'l capacity of the BigBoy only relates to the larger filtration surface areas, not the watt-density related sterilization. TrojanUVMax seems to be 40W. Any thoughts?

I've had 100% success rate with Trojan UV Max C-4 model in normal household use. The flow rate mfg's list is for specific doses...each unit should list a range and tell you the dose at a particular flow rate. I've seen cheaper units that advertise a high flow, but the fine print lists a realively low exposure dosage. I've been told that different contaminants may require a higher dose to kill. If you really want to know what is happening, install a sample tap immediately before and after the unit, and do a MPN test (actual bacteria count) done, instead of a simple pass/fail. This will give you hard numbers to compare.

Measuring my flow rate at an outside spigot, before the filter, with the 5 gal bucket gets me ~14 gpm (22 seconds fill), way over the Pura UV20. Pretty close to the BB/ Trojan Max. So I need to reduce the flow. Can I just reduce the trigger pressure of the pump? The meter reads 40psi. It has a Goulds pressure chamber.

With a pressure chamber on the system, I cant understand why I should trust any flow measuring technique that involves a single bucket. I measure with one spigot, that gets me one value. But say 2 taps are open inside the house- thats twice as much opening for the water to flow out. Flow rate is based on pressure versus resistance right? So more open taps ==> less resistance ==> more flow rate. If it was hooked up only to a pump, that had an inherent flow limitation, perhaps a single bucket would work. ??

Flow rate seems to be a big weakness of a UV system. Unless you get a huge system, how could you ever be sure that a spike in flow (two simultaneous flushes etc) wouldn't bring in a fresh colony of bacteria?

I am tempted to 1) continually chlorinate the well and/or 2) UV-filter the drinking/washing sink only.

There are two types of UV lights. Class A and B. B is half the strength of A. That is the 16,000 part in the description of the UV light here. That is why there are two wattages, 32,000 requires more watts.

Most UV lights come with an internal flow control to limit flow hence the gpm rating. This UV light probably has one OR they are using the flow through the filter housing they are using for the UV light chamber.

I don't like that type light, they are much less quality than SS types and sell for about the same money. They are much harder to service also because of having to screw off the sump while it is full of water and, the lamp and/or quartz can be broken easily.

You can't blame the well construction or driller if the groundwater the well is in is contaminated....

You can't stop bacteria contaminated water from entering the well to replace chlorine shocked water as you run/use water.

If your well is a screened well, shocking will rarely work. Sometimes shocking doesn't work for long in a rock bore well either.

Leaving chlorinated water sit in plumbing for more than like 20 minutes, doesn't do anything except make ya feel better. That is because chlorine is used to kill bacteria and oxidize iron, manganese, H2S etc. in the water and once used, the only type of chlorine left to kill or oxidize anything is called Free Chlorine and if you don't have from .2 ppm or more residual free chlorine, it's useless.

Total chlorine is what you measure to get your 100 ppm or whatever strength and it is reduced by the demand (how can anyone know how much demand there is?) so you're left with Free chlorine if you had enough total chlorine to start with. Total - demand = free.

If you shock with enough chlorine to get a strong smell in the water, you don't need to test/measure and usually should be OK, if not you need more chlorine.

No one should use any type/form of pool chlorine. It definitely is not meant for potable water use and using crystals or pucks etc.that then lay in the bottom of a well below the pump inlet is not a good thing.

There are FDA/EPA approved 70% chlorine pellets for potable water use that any water treatment dealer (online or local) and some pump and/or plumber supply houses sell. Maybe some big box or hardware stores too.

To shock plumbing you need a strong non scented bleach solution to all fixtures and appliances. The best way to do that is to run the cold water at the kitchen sink into a large glass etc. as you hang your nose (don't get the water in your eyes) on the rim smelling for chlorine. When you smell it shut off the water. Then do the same at all other sinks and flush the toilet after the sink smells of chlorine. Then as you eave the last bathroom, run the hot water for 10 seconds. You will not smell chlorine in a tank type water heater system, this is to draw chlorine into the water heater inlet and tank. Then do the dish and clothes washers. You go to Fill/Start and let them fill for like 15 seconds and stop the fill.

You let everything sit for 15 minutes and then run cold water only at each sink, cold water only, for 10 seconds and shut it off and go to the next bathroom. Wait 15-20 minutes and repeat that at all sinks, outside faucets and do it every15-20 minutes 4-5 times.

Then or when out of chlorine solution run hot water for a few minutes and then cold water at all sinks to flush it out, flush all toilets, tubs, showers etc., put the washing machine into Rinse and let it run until it shuts itself off and don't forget the outside faucets, tubs, showers.

Of course you can't allow the chlorine solution to weaken to the where it is too weak, or runs out, so I'd fill one of the two filter sumps of this UV light with regular non scented bleach and of course you'd remove all cartridge filters to do this.

At home Coliform/Ecoli bacteria tests work very well IF you follow instructions.

Take the sample as close to the well as possible and if using the boiler drain on the pressure tank, run the water from it a few seconds to flush any sediment out before collecting the sample.

After shocking the well, using the plumbing process above, then do the plumbing again if you get dirty water from the fixtures while doing the well.

You don't want to run shock water from the well into a septic tank system so use a garden hose on an outside faucet and put the water somewhere it won't stain anything. Unless you've been looking for a way to get out of doing flower beds etc..

To shock the well you should use that garden hose from an outside faucet or the boiler drain valve on the pressure tank and run water back down the well for like 15-20 minutes to circulate the chlorine in the water column before running the water into the plumbing. The when the plumbing i done, use the hose somewhere to flush any chlorine out of the well.

You should not use any chlorinated water for cooking or drinking and yhou should wait 4=7 days after shocking the system before retesting for bacteria. That is to allow time for bacteria to reenter the well if it is going to. If the shocking works, you won't find any. Or, if you test to soon you won't either but that doesn't mean the shocking solved the problem.

I've put in a couple brands of UV and NEVER seen one that had an internal flow control. They ALL recommend installing an external flow control to prevent overrunning the unit....they tell you a flow that the unit is effective at, so you won't overload it....

Yeah flow control seems necessary. They claim 15% accuracy, due to the internal membrane that adjusts. Where to buy 'em? dole seems out there, but not a lotta vendors.
..update: ordered a 7gpm 3/4" inline from Mcmaster.